Select sermons preached in the Broadway Church

Preface

From the sermons which I have preached in this city, I have selected some that were in a convenient shape for publication, and have gathered them into the present volume. This book, therefore, hardly needs any other preface than the title-page. I observe, however, that as it is a selection nobody need look into it for a system of theology, or even for a statement of all my views of vital and practical religion. But, without any affectation, I venture to say that while the scholar or theologian may find little to interest him in these pages, I verily believe that what I have preached here is religion, — and having tried to preach as one who does believe so, I hope that some who may take up the book will find in it that which will apply to their spiritual condition and meet their wants. I pray that God's blessing may rest upon it, and that it may do something for Christ's cause in the worlds I merely add, that should the reader find some repetition of ideas in these sermons, and even of language, the fact that they had no serial connection, and were preached at times wide apart, must be my excuse.

New York, Oct. 29th, 1859.

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Contents

SERMON PAGE

L— PROVIDENTIAL ADJUSTMENTS, . . 1

II. — CHRIST'S PROMISE, .... 24

II. Christ's Promise

Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Matthew xi. 28.

In the first place, I call your attention to the fact that there is something very remarkable not only in the substance, but in the manner of these words. They reveal a self-conscious authority and power in the speaker, which distinguishes Him from any mere teacher or philosopher who ever came into the world. Here is no elaboration of argument, no hesitancy of opinion, but direct and full assurance. It is the manner of one speaking out of Himself, and knowing what He affirms ; identifying His promise with His own Personality. "Come" — not unto a theory, or an opinion — but " Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and / will give you rest." There was but one who ever stood up among men, and spoke in this way.

And thus conscious not only of what He speaks, but to what He speaks ! Such a wide range of application to His words ! There are so many who do labor, and are heavy laden. Nay, when we duly consider tlie

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matter, they actually comprise the entire human race, and they reach to the profoundest need of all. Can we conceive of an invitation which strikes upon a more common chord than this ? Is there any term which so comprehensively describes and summons men of the most diverse classes? Riches and Poverty — do not men labor, are they not heavy laden, in both conditions ? Will not these terms answer for the hearts that are sick in the midst of pleasure, as well as for the weary frames that are racked with pain ?

Now one of the best marks of a good physician is skill in diagnosis. Through all the labyrinths of this mysterious organism, under the most complex disguises, his sure eye traces the radical difficulty. He says precisely— "Your disease is here." So the Great Physician indicated the radical disease of humanity at large, with that one word " Rest."

For I need go no farther than your own consciousness to confirm the general applicability of the promise in the text, " Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Do we not find something within ourselves answering to this call ? We read and hear many of these scriptural passages with indifference, until some personal experience elicits their meaning. A wave of the heart washes over them, and then we see all their depth and beauty. But the passage before us, whenever uttered, must be felt, though its real fulness may come out only under certain conditions. I have heard the words pronounced by a gifted singer when they broke upon me with a significance I had never felt before, opening aa

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it were into the calm recesses of the Saviour's own spirit ; revealing that peace which was deepest even in Him. They will always touch us with their great tenderness, and yet we may hear them as though they were addressed only to a class of men — only to the very weary, and the very miserable. A little knowledge of ourselves, however, will convince us that they are actually addressed to all men, and that we and all others need, more than anything else, the application of this promise.

Oh, yes ! it is not alone the physically tired, the abjectly wretched — the long procession of those whose faces are pale with sorrow and marked with traces of unrest — it is not these alone that should start forward to meet this invitation of Jesus : but all conditions of humanity — bosoms throbbing under silks and jewelry, heads crowned with pomp and pride, and hearts busy with the cares and pleasures and diversified shows of this world. Man indicates his profoundest needs by his highest ideals. That which is farthest from Ms grasp is brightest to his vision. And so the cravings of his soul are betrayed in his associations with the idea of " Best." For he makes it the synonyme of supreme good. The conception over-arches the trouble and effort of his daily life, as the deep, serene sky over-arches the earth. It is to " Best" that he looks forward in his most eager pursuits. This is to be the end of wealth, of power, of lofty fame — some niche of glory where he may repose upon his honors ; some sunny retreat, in which his later life may slowly burn away like a summer evening. What a blessing does

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he acknowledge in literal rest ; in the sleep whose soft oblivion makes an island of every day, and breaks the hold of continuous care ; that cools the hot brain, and bathes the weary eye-lids, and lets the buffeted and foundering heart cast anchor every night in some harbor of happy dreams. He feels the beneficence of that law which makes even misery halt, and besieging fortune strike its tents, and in the great democracy of nature levels the children of men in common helplessness and common need ; finding no conditions so wretched, no spot so bleak, that even the most desperate cannot recline nearer to the bosom of the common mother, and forget for a little while their sorrow and their shame.

And when, in the merely natural view of things, man would soften the gloom of the grave, and find some consolation in that which is inevitable, he thinks of it as a place of kindly rest — a port where the storms of life never beat, and the forms that have been tossed on its chafiug waves lie quiet forevermore. There the child nestles as peacefully as ever it lay in its mother's arms, and the workman's hands lie still by his side, and the thinker's brain is pillowed in silent mystery, and the poor girl's broken heart is steeped in a balm that extracts its secret woe, and is in the keeping of a charity that covers all blame. And always this idea of unbroken quiet broods around the grave ; in sunshine and moonlight, under the watch of the midnight sky, when winter transforms the poorest mound into sculptured marble, or summer glorifies it with its procession of flowers. Our own poet has linked the great sleep-

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ing-place to all the serenity of nature, and a greater poet than he, for thousands of years, has intensified our impression of that magnificent silence and " ease of Death/' where he might " have lain still and been quiet, and slept with kings and counsellors of the earth .... with princes that had gold," and " who filled their houses with silver," where " the prisoners rest together," where " the small and great are," where " the servant is free from his master," where " the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest."

Nay, it is not merely the realm of silence and of darkness, but of the highest bliss, that we associate with this ideal, calling it " The Land of Rest."

Measuring, then, the depth of man's desire by the height of this conception, we find it to be a universal craving of human nature. Therefore surely it was not mere earthly wisdom that thus knew what was in man so much better than even man himself knows, and that with a voice of self-conscious authority, uttered these tender, yet profound words — " Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

Passing now to the substance of this promise, we discover that it has various applications. While, as I have just said, the response to Christ's invitation issues from the common heart of humanity, it comes from the depths of different experiences. There are various conditions of mind and soul in which man feels this need of rest.

I. For instance, the words of the text are applicable to those who are engaged in the conflict of Doubt.

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And this is by no means a limited experience at the present time, for ours is peculiarly an age of doubt. Not, as it seems to me, an age of positive ?m-religion, but, rather, a period of sincere interest in religious realities, without settled convictions ; a breaking up of the depths of religious thought — very different from the dogmatic infidelity and superficial materialism of the last century — thought desiring to reach some solid ground of faith ; seeking rest, though, it may be, finding none. Some seem disposed to regard this state of mind as a condition of moral weakness, if not of positive sin. He who withholds his assent from current beliefs, or questions the ground of received opinions, is looked upon not only as one blinded with error, but as one guilty of an offence. But surely we should learn to discriminate between earnest, honest doubt, and a voluntary and flippant scepticism. On the other hand, we should distinguish between decided steadfastness in our own convictions, between a loyal preference of the right to the wrong, and arrogant judgment as to the integrity of those who may differ from us. We do not compromise our own faith by admitting the honesty of another's doubt. And while holding fast our own convictions, we may sympathize with the struggles of one who is trying to attain the same convictions, but who, as yet, has failed. Evidently a state of doubt may spring from the very earnestness of a man's dew tion to the Truth ; not, as appears to be so often assumed, from his wilful preference of error. I ask, what is there in this mere fact of doubting, that should put a man outside the pale of our respect and regard, or

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cause us to question even the depth of his religious life ? He, in his doubt, may be much more loyal than you in your faith. It may be that he is so bent on attaining reality, he cannot be content with anything that seems to him other than reality. He is so convinced that Truth must be a matter of conviction, that he can be forced into no politic confession, into no smothering of thought. Now I have no regard for a cold, speculative intellect, that prides itself on nonconformity, and delights in doubt, while it keeps aloof from those warm and practical currents which lead towards a solution. But I verily believe that there is more religious vitality, more spiritual hopefulness, in an earnest seeker of the Truth, baffled as yet in his aim, than in a whole pew-load of strait believers, who have hummed their assent to propositions which they have never brought distinctly before their minds, and which they have never sounded with their hearts. It is better to be earnest about things, than to be satisfied with mere word^s. And I cannot help thinking that the promise — " Seek, and ye shall find," applies to those who are bent on discovering Truth as well as other blessings ; and if a man does seek for this with a true heart, surely God will lead him to all needful conclusions. Now a man is not justified in setting himself to work for the mere purpose of making doubts; every once in the while knocking in pieces the fabric of his own belief to scrutinize its interior mechanism. There is a time when we should rest upon reasonable convictions, and when, if the intellect can see clearly no further, we judge of opinions as we do of men — by

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their fruits. Still it is not good for a man to smother his doubt, or to deny it ; but to feel it clear through, sift it, probe it, and turn it up to the light. At least I am sure it is not the Christian way to meet doubt with denunciation and contempt — as though it were a condition of positive wickedness as well as of error. Let me say, once more, that I exempt from this consideration all heartless disbelief, all intellectual affectation, all that little second-hand scepticism which young men sometimes cultivate as they cultivate a beard, — in that callow season when they stumble against " the Absolute," and chatter about " the All." I attach great importance to the inquiry how far error is voluntary, and therefore is a result for which men are responsible. But where there is sincere, struggling, inevitable doubt, I say there the spirit of Christianity comes not in wrathful antagonism and the assumption of wilful unbelief, but with sympathy for the real need that underlies all this earnest yet baffled seeking. It comes to meet the wants of that case, and offer its solution as the ground of "Rest." It comes not in antagonism to the nature that sends up this cry of doubt, but in response to it. It was precisely at this point that the Apostle Paul applied the Gospel. He saw what men felt after. He offered them a Revelation of that " Unknown God " whom they ignorantly worshipped. He did not denounce the Athenians, but appealed to them as one who discerned the depth of want that was manifest in their religious ignorance, and who knew that he had something better. And I believe that it is this condition of sincere but unanswered inquiry that

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Christ Himself addresses in the words of the text. He has come into the world not to silence doubts, but to ansiver them. Answer them by His Truth and His Faith, as the only adequate solution of the great mysteries of existence.

I do not say that He has answered all possible questions, and left no room for intellectual endeavor. But I do say that He has shown enough to give assurance to the trusting soul, and repose to the tired thought. I do affirm that in His Revelation of the Fatherhood of God, and of the immortality of man, He has cast a broad light upon events — light enough to explain their drift, and impart confidence as to their end. I maintain that, receiving His Truth, no human heart need be miserable, no brain distracted. In short, He has answered the most necessary questions concerning God and human destiny. There is ample range for speculation, if the mind delights to drift among problems which it can never solve. It may tug at the old question of " the origin of evil," and find it good exercise as a piece of intellectual gymnastics ; but the heart is satisfied when it has discovered the uses of evil. We are free to reject Christianity if in this world of hopes and fears we can find anything better — anything that more completely fills our deepest wants. But we cannot find anything better — anything near so good — anything that kindles such Divine light amid our perplexity and our dread. We may cast it off and try to live without it. But we cannot live a great while without it, in any condition of full and noble manhood ; meeting the trials of life, and the questions which open

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in all our social relations, and the events which press our nature into an intense consciousness of itself ; we cannot do this, without discovering our need of Christ's words to live and to suffer, to do and to die by. Therefore, there is no utterance in this world that so answers to what is deepest in us, and that so fulfils its promise, as that utterance wafted to us in our doubts and perplexities, over the lapse of ages — " Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

II. But there is another experience of the human heart which is met by Christ's invitation in the text. It is an experience deeper and more common even than that of doubt — it is the experience of Sin. Some may say that here indeed is the spring of all other misery and unrest — of all painful doubt and weariness. Doubtless it is the spring of more evil than we can fathom, and to nothing are the Saviour's words more strictly applicable. " All ye that labor and are heavy laden" — does not this truly describe those who are in this spiritual thraldom and wretchedness? Not all laboring with this consciousness of sin, but all heavy laden. Not all, perhaps, even conscious that they are heavy laden. There are some whose sins, apparently, do not trouble them ; and who do evil things with a lamentable unconsciousness of iniquity. Moreover, the worst sins are, perhaps, those that are least felt — the most malignant but it may be not the most unpopular. We raise a hue and cry against certain gross vices. We lift hands of horror against the sin that damages property, or reputation ; and all this

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very properly perhaps. But the sin that lurks under the veil of respectability, and cuts athwart no human law, but eats into our very selves like a canker, and demoralizes us at the core — the rooted selfishness, the moral unbelief, the un- Christ-like pride, down in the centre of our hearts, we may bear but little consciousness of that. And yet the omniscient eye may see more abomination packed away thus under smooth personal decencies, than in the reeling brutality of the drunkard, or the painted shame of the harlot, or any other overt instances of guilt that hang out signals of moral shipwreck. Moreover, sharp, ragged sins — " violent sins/' as we may call them — puncture the conscience more keenly, and lead to a more intense repentance, than this inert guilt that coils in smooth, complacent folds about the heart. A tremendous lie may frighten a man out of the habit of lying altogether, who will daily serve out a batch of " white lies," and sleep none the less soundly.

I repeat, then, although sin is really a heavy load, there may be a great many who are not conscious that they are heavy laden. And yet, I ask — is any man utterly at rest in sin ? Are the better instincts of the soul ever completely quenched? In the most hardened nature is there not an aspiring something that feels the guilty gravitation which drags it down? The Prodigal, in his gayest moments, within the circle of the dance and the wine-cup, was he not heavy laden, and did he not know that he was heavy laden, though he may not have felt his burden so intensely as when he sat among the husks and the swine ? Look around

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you at the most repulsive forms of guilt ; at the dregs of human abomination that are blown like scum over the surface of society. Do you think that there is one so low , so crusted with uncleanness, so far beneath the line that separates the meanest man from the brute that perishes, that he never feels he is heavy laden ? Is there no slight nerve that quivers in that nature which still is immortal ? Is there no chord in that defaced soul that even yet announces the fact that all is not well with it ? Is there to-night, in any haunt of riot and shame, a nether darkness in our social state so profound that these words of Jesus would convey no meaning, and meet with no response ? A response waking up oh, what numb, sore chords ! calling up oh, what visions of lost innocence — vibrating through what years of misery — as this Divine utterance, falling from His lips who rejected no penitent, who cast no scorn even upon the most degraded, should sweep over those wild and guilty hearts — " Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

The glory of the gospel appears in its application to the grossest sinners, in its solicitude for the vilest, in hope and tenderness for the most abject. But, after all, these are not the greatest sinners. There is that hardness of heart which is covered with a smooth surface ; there is that polished adamantine wickedness of epicureanism and profligacy ; there is miserly selfishness, vain worlclliness, proud self-righteousness ; yet even concerning any one of these, I ask — is it entirely at ease? Has it no consciousness of being heavy

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laden ? In all its glitter, its frivolity, its isolation, its abundance of possession, does it not need rest ?

In this condition of sin, then, all men are heavy laden — in some way, all men feel that it is so with them — but all do not labor in the full consciousness of sin. The best of men do. Paul did. The great Apostle felt a mortal conflict going on within him, and cried out in the bitterness of his great misery. And any man in this condition — any man who, like that poor prodigal, has risen to his feet, and with streaming eyes turned towards the Father's face, saying " I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight" — will know what it is to need and to find the Rest which Christ promises.

Men find that rest not in any redeeming virtue of their own which cancels their past sins, or insures them against present sinfulness, but in their full surrender to that divine love which was made manifest in Jesus. They trust, and so they rest. Conscious that evil is in them, they are conscious that divine help is in them also ; and they are lifted above their failures and defeats by this conscious alliance in spirit with the Infinite One. The law condemns them. They strike against it and are beaten down. The Spirit assures them ; they cast themselves upon its merciful sympathy, and are saved. Yes, there is a substantial ground of rest for us when we actually feel that God knows our hearts clear through, and do not try to hide ourselves, or disguise anything that is within us from His eye, but in simple confession of our sinfulness rely upon His mercy and His help.

The man who, roused to conscious conflict with his

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sins, surrenders himself to this conviction of the Divine sympathy and love, passes into the region of spiritual freedom. He is made free not from all liability to sin, but from slavery to sin ; the desire, the motive, the love of goodness is in him, obviating the necessity of any Law to restrain him from evil, and placing him in alliance with the Spirit of God. In this freedom he possesses not sluggish repose — which is not what the word means even for earth or heaven ; but he has harmonious activity, which is Christ's promised Rest. He is still at war, but in the deepest recesses of his being, at the core of his life, he is at peace. I suppose this is akin to what Paul means when he says that " the Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." I suppose that it was in this way, that from his terrible inward conflict that glorious spiritual warrior found Rest.

III. Thus far I have dwelt upon experiences which may be practically limited — the experience of doubt to those who have been roused to (kink upon great spiritual realities, the experience of sin to those who have been roused to feel these realities.

There may be those, however, who would say — though they ought not to say it — " these words of Christ do not reach us in either of these experiences." Let me, then, inquire whether a response to the invitation in the text does not issue from the condition of our common and daily life. " Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." I ask, does not this appeal find some response

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in your hearts ? Does it not strike there as if it meant something for each of you ? I will not now specify the openly miserable and weary, the sorrowstricken children of humanity, to whom these words have come for nineteen hundred years with such sweetness and assurance ; hut I ask any man who now hears me — are you completely at rest in present conditions ? Do you not feel the need of something that does not come from material possessions, and is not a gift of this outward world ? It is a very simple question — but I would put it very earnestly. Do you not feel that in the Truth, in the Spirit of Jesus Christ, there is that which you cannot rest without — which you can rest with ?

Let me suggest a few instances. I ask, then, do we not in the various transactions of life need a central poise, or principle — an axis of moral rest from which all our conduct shall radiate, and also a centre of inspiration ? Do we not need a principle which, broad enough for those great occasions which are rare in the transactions of life, is fitted to the smaller instances that occur every day ? Now Christ's Law of Love to God and to man, is just that principle. And a man without such a principle is a man without peace. Even though he may not be much troubled in conscience, he is perplexed with expedients. Unless he stands on the simple basis of Right, he is continually inventing devices and dodging consequences. No man in this world of dollars and cents, of disappointments and cares, stands so firmly grounded as he who has only one law of action for all occasions, and

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that is the law of right action. He may fall into trouble, but he never meets with any real disaster. His worldly possessions may dissolve, but he is not shipwrecked. In the midst of whirling calamities and broken schemes, he has central peace, stable as the throne of God.

Now, as a question to be answered by practical experience, I ask — do not men need such a central poise and principle to check their passions and to guide their aims ? It is, I repeat, a Providential fact, that no man can rest in anything but the decisions of this strait Rule of Righteousness. He who obeys it and lives from it, when he has tried to do all that it inspires him to do, in the midst of all disappointments and defeats, can calmly fold his hands and wait for further intimations. But the man of expedients must keep patching and tinkering, and be driven from point to point, because his machinery does not fit and is perpetually out of order somewhere.

It is so in public instances. An unrighteous decision never settled a matter. The just course for the time being may seem paralyzed and bound — the Truth put to sleep. But God is in the universe, working through all things, and the guilty expedient cannot remain. The Truth simmers and heaves under all these devices, and makes manifest the law — " first pure, then peaceable." Battle-fields that break the green earth into furrows, are the places where Truth has heaved the clods from its coffin, and started forth to vindicate its everlasting majesty. The ruins of great empires are but the sundered walls and shat-

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tered slabs of gigantic sepulchres in which men have vainly endeavored to seal tip their own iniquity, and have commemorated a lie. In public action, in common life, there is no rest except in righteous principle.

But, again, as a question of practical, every-day interest, I ask — do we not need the rest of substantial possession ? The things of this world coming and going in every alternation of seed-time and harvest. Life running by us like a roaring sea — nay, not running by us, but running tvith us — our youth gliding away like a dream — the faces we love altering with touches of relentless time, and fading in the mist of death — our vigor drying up, and our strength becoming exhausted — our wealth that we meant to lean upon shrivelling to cinders — our hold upon the world itself slipping every hour — with all this, I ask, do we not need such an inward assurance, such a vision of immortal Good, such a communion with the Eternal, such a consciousness of Rest in the Unchangeable God, as verily does spring up in our own experience of the faith and the truth of Jesus Christ ?